I though more people would have posted their stories. Are CornMaster and I the only 2 people with the game?

Well first off, there is a lot I like, and a lot I don't like.

I started a game on Chieftan with everything pretty much as the default. I took on 7 other civilizations, and it was my intention to win the game via conquest. BIG MISTAKE. For some reason, when I started out, I was placed on a continent with NO fresh water resource. Since you can't irrigate from oceans anymore(until you discover electricity), I had stagnant growth in my cities.

It took me a while to get used to the new system of units costing money instead of having support, but I like it much better. I also like the fact that you no longer get that stupid annoying message popping up, tellling you can't move adacent to an enemies unit. BIG PLUS!:king:

I found the easiest thing to do in this game was amass culture. I was having slow growth because of my irrigation problem. I was getting new cities via cultural conquest. They just decided to leave their empire and join mine. A great way to take over the map if you don't want to get your hands dirty;)

Unfortunately, I should have kept doing that. I started to get cocky and went after the Aztecs, who promptly kicked my ass. I was finally able to make peace, but while I was at war they had the Egyptians declare war on me. It took me FOREVER to get the Egyptians to make peace(I had to give them a technology to do it.)

At that point, I decided I would try for a histograph victory seeing as how the whole map had been filled up with the other 7 empires.

Well, that did not last long. The Egyptians declared war on me out of nowhere, and slowly, one by one, every other civilization in the game allied with the Egyptians and declared war on me. So it was 7 against 1 and even on Chieftan that is hard to overcome. Let that be a lesson. Don't piss off the other civilizations unless you are technologically superior. I was only slightly ahead of them and science, but they had FAR more units.

I am now going to try a new game with only two other civilizations playing against me and see what happens.

OH, and I find it very irritating on my "SLOW" computer that the computer insisted on making me watch every single move it made. It took me five hours to play a game where I was anihalated.(SP?) Oh, and one more thing about culture. It seems that I had so much that every time my capital city(Rome) was taken over, I got it back. But it kept falling to persistent attacks and I gave up on it. More updates to follow!

I posted some of my thoughts on my first game on corn masters thread :) I've played two games, one with just a few civs, and one with 7, and the game with less civs was definately easier, although I was only playing that game on chieftan.

I've begun my next game. I let the CPU choose my tribe and my opponent. I'm the Zulus and my opponent is the Persians. Right now I'm just trying to take everything in, but I feel I'm doing much better this time. I am building cities faster than you can say Sid Meier. I'll decide what type of victory to go for when the game gets in its later stages.:egypt:

Man, I had a rough go in my first stint.

I stupidly thought that since I'm a Deity player on Civ2 that King level should be fine for me for Civ3.

Egads! I tried starting as the Chinese as I thought that their Rider unit would be cool (By the way, it would seem that the Rider is a 2/2/2 rather than the 2/2/3 that I saw on the "Civ of the Week" site). Well, I started on a smallish land mass which I shared with the Japanese. Too stuck in Civ2 strategem, I thought "No problem. I'll expand a bit and then exterminate these guys."

My first thought, again with Civ2 in mind, was to go for Monarchy right away. I think that was a big mistake. The way the tech tree seemed to work, was that if you went for techs further in, it took a huge amount of turns to study them. For example: Ceremonial Burial --> Mysticism --> Polytheism --> Monarchy. By taking a direct line, each tech took close to 30 turns each to accomplish, where if I would have gone for pottery or warrior code, at any given time the time would have been like 4-8 turns. It would seem that it may actually be better to stay in despotism for a while - at least in the early portion.

Suffice to say, I fell WAY behind in tech. I also couldn't keep up with the Japanese expansion. When my capital was size 2, I had finished a settler unit but got the message that Beijing was too small to produce a settler. Urgh. Before I knew it, I had only 5 cities to the Japanese 7. My culture was OK, but I was beginning to get a sinking feeling that this was not going to be a cake walk.

Later, I tried to build some wonders. This is different from Civ2 as well. You cannot have 2 cities building the same wonder, and once a wonder is completed, you can't keep building it while waiting for another tech to give you a different wonder to switch to. I actually built the Colossus in my capital, but was beaten to every wonder after that. In one case, my city was a few turns away from completing the Pyramids, then I received a message that the French had completed them. With no additional wonders to build, ALL of that initial production had to go to building a TEMPLE! This happened a lot.

OK, so I thought I'd get rid of the Japanese on my land mass. I finally became a Monarchy and finally had Horseback Riding as well. I had access to horses, so I thought "Riders, here I come". But I couldn't build them - I guess it had to do with not quite reaching my "Golden Age" at that point. No matter, with failed Wonders I had several cities with barracks and began producing vet horsemen. Once I had about 7 or 8, I invaded Tokyo (no longer the capital at this point, but close to me). I was able to take the city, and with enough military in the city I was able to keep them from turning back (I think my high culture helped as well). I was given some cash by taking the city, but did not have the opportunity to take a tech.

Now, the Japanese were planning quite a counter.

With iron working and access to iron, Japanese swordmen entered the picture and decimated everything around them. Good Lord, I could not do anything against them. They just mowed everything down and the best I could do was retreat and let them take their dang city back. They really were good about mounting a mass attack, and before long my cities were staring down the blades of about 10 total swordsmen. Mercy!

I ended there, confident that I was not ready for King level until I figured out the nuances a lot better. I think that there will have to be a good deal of "unlearning" when it comes to Civ3 for Civ2 players. I am glad that the game seems to be presenting a challenge.

In general, the animated battles and the overall challenge are points that I actually like. The interface, the advisiors, the tweaking of the cities, etc. are a bit confusing to get a hold of right now. I guess one can get used to it. I was hoping for more in terms of artistry. While I like the city views and the palace building (instead of the throne room), I was a bit disappointed at the terrain artwork. It thought it looked a bit "cartoony" and it was very difficult to differentiate what unit was what and to whom they belonged. In all, thougth, I'm looking forward to seeing how my game play evolves.

Originally posted by Kev
Egads! I tried starting as the Chinese as I thought that their Rider unit would be cool (By the way, it would seem that the Rider is a 2/2/2 rather than the 2/2/3 that I saw on the "Civ of the Week" site).
....
I finally became a Monarchy and finally had Horseback Riding as well. I had access to horses, so I thought "Riders, here I come". But I couldn't build them - I guess it had to do with not quite reaching my "Golden Age" at that point.

The Chinese Rider is 4.4.3 and becomes available with the Chivalry tech (not Horseriding). Once you discover Chivalry, you need horses and iron to build them.

Also, you do not "reach" a Golden Age, they are triggered by your actions: either building a Wonder that is compatible with your Civ's special attributes or winning your first (non-barbarian) combat with your unique unit.

I'm still starting on deity...admittedly on huge world (max.no of civs) and on Britain so I can have a chance!

I'm so glad that the difficulty of the game has been raised...it will make the game far more of a challenge!

I'm still starting on deity...

WOW! (what can i say more :egypt: )

Originally posted by kittenOFchaos
I'm still starting on deity...admittedly on huge world (max.no of civs) and on Britain so I can have a chance!

I'm so glad that the difficulty of the game has been raised...it will make the game far more of a challenge!

kittenOFchaos becomes kittenOFmasochism ;)

When (if :mad: ) I get it from Amazon, I'll probably start on Chieftain, largest random world possible, max civs, meduim-difficulty barbs, and as the Greeks with their mighty hoplite to defend me from the evil A.I.

Diety! Never again. Well at least until I beat it on a less difficult level. I got my arse handed to me by the Chinese in the year 230 BC.
Man, so much for playing a nice peacefull civ!

Here's a short description of my first game of civ3.
I played on a random medium sized map with 8 civs (including mine) on Warlord with no barbarians. I chose the Chinese because if their specialties (Industrious/Militaristic).

At first I discovered it was much harder to quickly expand my empire, settlers seemed to cos not 1 but 2 population points in cities over a certain size. My second settler in Beijng schrunk it from 6 to 4. Expansion was slow, I had the Japanese and the Indians in the South and the Russians in the North, when I had about 10 cities or so, all borders connected with no room for anymore expansion.

It's still quite unclear to me what trading does. Trading luxuries makes the people happy and resources allow the construction of certain units, but where's my extra commerce?

I built a few wonders and a lot of libraries and temples, so the other civs are all in awe of my culture. It's 1200AD now and I just discovered Nationalism and upgraded all my musketmen to riflemen. The rival civs are still wandering around in the ancient era while I've just entered the industrial era.

Strange thing is, the other civs haven't broken a single peace treaty... I hardly ever brake treaties, so far i haven't waged a single war. The only battles I've had were with the privateers, but that sucked, the privateer is the same strength as the Galley (trireme) and so my cannon laden pirate ships only had a 50% chance of beating the arrow shooting galleys.. geez.

I guess I'll go for cultural victory, 4 enemy cities have already joined my civ because they were in awe of my culture. Or maybe I'll build a space ship... :)

Well, I had an interesting 2nd game. With only one other civilization to compete with, I figured I would get either a cultural victory or a domination victory. Wrongo! I was up against the Persians who were not culturally impressed with me. I'm not sure how much of the map I took. It looked like 66%, but it obviously wasn't. Well, it started to get late in the game, and I wasn't sure what type of victory to go for. I decided against conquest, and I did not want a histographic victory. That's Ok on Deity, but not on Chieftan. I started rush building settlers like mad in hopes that I could gain enough cities to cover the map completely in my Zulu yellow color. I wasn't sure if that was going to be enough so I made sure that my research would be high enough so I could build a spaceship. But before I did that I decided to try for a diplomatic victory with the UN. So I build the Un and we hold the election. There was one minor flaw however. In my arrogance, I assumed that being really nice to the Persians would get me their vote for UN leader. Wrongo! They voted for themselves, and seeing as how there was only 2 civilizations, there was a tie, and there is no tiebreaker process. UGH! So now I'm still building massive cities, and I'm guessing that it would not be enough. I was a bit confused about the Apollo program. I did not realize you needed specific resources to build the wonder. I thought that was for parts only. The sad part was that I only had to build one road to get the last resource i needed, aluminum. So, I build the road and get ready to rush build the Apollo program. Wrongo! Wonders cannot be rush built in this game. UGH!:mad: So I put my best city on it and I get it in like 11 turns or something. Then I prepare to rush build the 10 components. Wrongo! Spaceship components CANNOT BE RUSH BUILT! UGH! So now I wait for them to be built. I finally get the darn thing built, and launch my ship(be sure to save before the last component is built, because the game does not allow you to do anything but launch the ship once the last component is completed). I ended up with a score of 693 I think. I'm either going to do the game of the month or play the same type of game on a higher difficulty for my third game, but I will be trying for a different victory type, probably conquest.

So take heed, litter the map with your cities, especially if opposition is not rough(1 civ in this case). On to game 3!